(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cooperative processing method, a cooperative processing apparatus, an external cooperative system, and a storage medium storing a program for realizing them, in which an image forming apparatus, such as, a printer, a facsimile apparatus or a multifunction machine having those functions, cooperates with an external apparatus to perform a specified process which can not be handled by the image forming apparatus, so that a specified process which can not be realized by only one of the apparatuses is realized. More particularly, the invention relates to a contrivance of handling in a case where an error occurs in any one of apparatuses at the time of a cooperative process.
(2) Description of the Related Art
There is an external cooperative system in which plural apparatuses (devices) cooperate with each other to perform a specified process, so that various processes which can not be provided by only one of the apparatuses are performed.
For example, a system is known in which in a case where image information read by one image forming apparatus is temporarily stored in another image forming apparatus, when the image information becomes unnecessary for the image forming apparatus as a request source, the image forming apparatus as a request destination is notified, to avoid that the useless memory remains in the request destination.
However, according to the system described above, in order to avoid the unnecessary image residue in the image forming system in which plural image forming apparatuses such as digital copying machines are provided and the image forming apparatuses are connected to each other through a communication apparatus, they are constructed to communicate with each other. Thus, there is still a problem in a case where an image forming apparatus (corresponding to a main image forming apparatus disclosed in patent document 1) is connected to an external equipment (except a sub-image forming apparatus disclosed in patent document 1) on other network, not the other cooperative image forming apparatus, or in a handling method of a case where data to be communicated with each other is other than image data.
For example, after scan data is transferred from a device to a cooperative application service provider (ASP; Application Service Provider) and a character recognition (OCR; Optical Character Reader) process or the like is performed, when an error occurs during the process, there is a possibility that an intermediate product or data remains in the device or the ASP, and there arises a problem that the data is accumulated to occupy the memory and becomes a processing load, and further, there arises a problem of security of the remaining data.